Posted on 06/10/2003 12:39:26 PM PDT by Hillarys Gate Cult
CHICAGO - (KRT) - Lawyers seeking reparations for African-American descendants of slaves say they have located a 104-year-old man in rural Louisiana who says that he and his children were enslaved throughout much of the 20th Century and even during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The lawyers say the discovery could give their lawsuit critical, firsthand evidence of slavery in America, but a federal judge in Chicago rebuffed their request on Monday for immediate approval to take a deposition from the man to ensure his account doesn't die with him.
(Excerpt) Read more at centredaily.com ...
Where?
Yup, and has just been in the news in these parts: Couple Enslaved Woman : Ghanaian Forced to Work for No Pay .
do you have a link? Please.
The one argument the reparations crowd can't win is the fact that there are no living slaves. They're trying to create them now.
I see by the papers in the Yankee Capital that Johnny Cochran, and of course Jesse and Al, are wheezing and blowing like a county-fair calliope with a leaky boiler. They always are. This time it was about the need to pay reparations for the ravages trala of slavery. It got me to thinking.I hate it when that happens.
Now, I know Im hard-hearted, and mean-spirited, and no damn good. Its probably my only virtue. But on consideration, I realized that they might be right. The ravages of slavery do run deep, and cause motingator trouble, with no end in sight. I decided that compensation was only reasonable. Sometimes you dont like a conclusion, but you have to reach it. All right. Ill be a man about it.
You can pay me reparations, Johnny.
To start with, I figure you owe me for three bicycles. Maybe its a small thing, but Im tired of losing bicycles. Are we talking market value or replacement? What I really want to be paid for is having to keep my latest two-wheeler in my living room. Do you know how many times Ive knocked the fool thing over? And, oh, the scratch in my granddads antique desk that the brake lever made. Whats that worth?
Call it three grand. OK? Direct deposit would be nice.
But . . . how do we dollarize cultural retrogression? God knows I appreciate your offer of reparations, but Im having trouble with the arithmetic. Help me.
A few years back, my middle-school daughter brought home a horrendously misspelled science hand-out. Now, Johnny: You and I both know that its easy to make a typo, and write phenylkeetone instead of phenylketone. But feemelkeebome is stretching it. The errors were of this sort. An understanding of chemistry clearly had never rippled the serene surface of the womans mind.
Without thinking, I asked, What color is your teacher? (If I had thought carefully, I would have asked, What color is your teacher?) My daughter responded with an anguished, Da-d-d-d-y! She had made the connection, but knew she wasnt supposed to.
Ive got no problem with black teachers, if they are competent. No problem at all. But a teacher who is too ignorant to spell her subject, and too lazy to use a dictionary, ought to be flipping burgers. Simple burgers, with no moving parts. Thing is, we cant fire ignorant teachers, Johnny, because of the lingering effects of slavery. I can yell at an ignorant white teacher, but not at a black one. To expect blacks to meet standards is racist. You can send me the price of four years of tuition in a private school outside the country.
Whats the cost of permanent welfare? Subsidized everything? Enormous police departments? What do you figure? Just add it to your tab. Have you thought about setting up an endowment?
But heres a large ravage of slavery, Johnny: Fear.
What price do we put on looking over our shoulders? On watching to be sure we dont go one subway stop too far? Warning our girlfriends not to drive on certain streets? Checking the clientele of Seven-Eleven before going in at night?
People in, say, Switzerland can walk their streets after dark. We cant. Why? What have we got that they dont, that might cause fear?
Elvis impersonators, Johnny. Yep. Switzerland doesnt have any Elvis impersonators. Check for yourself.
Whats fear worth? Is it a minimum-wage job? Forty-hour week or twenty-four hours a day? Benefits? Seniority pay as people grow older, weaker, and less able to defend themselves? You see the actuarial difficulty. Accounting is a more difficult trade than you might think.
The white guy beaten to death 100 yards from my door last year they never caught the killers, but what you reckon, Johnny? Do you figure it was white Presbyterian women from the old-ladies home? Thats my guess. Thats who usually does it. Anyway, you can send me $540 for the Sig 9mm pistol I bought after blacks started moving into the neighborhood and crime went up. And ammo, carry permit, Hydra-Shock rounds.
Now, millions of honest blacks might write and say, Fred, we arent criminals. Why should we pay for what other blacks do? Splendid question. But of course whites say, We dont have any slaves. Why should we pay for what some other whites did? If it is a reasonable question for blacks to ask, as indeed it is, why isnt it a reasonable question for whites to ask?
But while you are in a mood to pay up, Johnny, let me introduce a useful concept: Civilizational rent. Youll like this. Its such a good idea.
A culture is essentially software. No? Sure, there are physical embodiments: positron-emission scanners, high-bypass turbofans, radar with Doppler beam-sharpening. Yet basically a culture is a body of knowledge, like Microsoft Word. (All right, throw in values. But I dont want to make this too difficult.)
White guys invented these things at considerable cost. We had to. Europe doesnt have much low-hanging fruit, and it gets cold in the north. So generations of people that Im sure youre familiar with Newton, Leibniz, Galois, Gauss, Carnot, Dirac did work that led to all kinds of useful . . . you know . . stuff.
Western civilization, its called.
As a result of slavery, you have been using our civilization without a license. (I know: Youre having trouble with the idea of implied retroactive acceptance of a license I invented five minutes ago. Microsoft would grasp it in a heartbeat. Anyway, Im writing the column.)
Further, youve been using it for a long time, Johnny. Air-conditioning. Roads. Writing. The wheel. Complicated stuff like that. Medicine. Tractors. Shoes. Houses. Ive spent time in Africa, where people live in stick things that look as if a Cub Scout had built a campfire and forgotten to light it. Youre getting a deal here, Johnny.
I dont wish stick houses on anyone. Im glad you have the benefits of electricity, clothes, and daytime TV. Id love to see blacks study, earn degrees on their merits, prosper. Think of the trouble it would save. But as suggested by your manly desire to pay reparations -- you owe us licensing fees. Granted, its hard to set a price on a culture. But if Microsoft Office goes for $250 at fire-sale prices, I guess a whole civilization is cheap at $100K a copy.
I believe we can do business, Johnny. I hope so. I can use the money.
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